Bryce Harper homered into those neat flower pots in left field at Nationals Park tonight

The Wasghington Nationals are one of baseball’s hottest teams. Bryce Harper is playing his best baseball of the season. Davey Johnson even cracked a few grins tonight. After what’s been a season in quicksand, it’s all good to see.

Bryce Harper extended his hitting streak to 11 games with this home run off Tom Koehler of the Marlins. And it seems Harper has been hitting an awful lot of opposite field shots this season. That’s the one aspect of Harper’s game that really is fully developed. He can hit the ball out to any part of the park. This one landed in the flower bed box in left field, shredding some of those neat little annual flowers in front of the left field seats. It got the Nats jump-started with a 2-0 lead, and they would go on to win 9-0. He would later add a single.

We’ve been waiting on this all year. The Nationals aren’t a mighty squad, but they’re a lot better than the mediocrity they’ve shown all season long. I don’t think their fate is completely spoken for yet. They’re 6.5 games out of the wildcard right now. They have a lot of games down the stretch against bad teams and teams that matter. If Harper ends the season hitting this way on most nights, do not be surprised if they enter the last week of the season with a chance to play their way into the playoffs.